Angels Don't Live Here
by empathapathique
Summary: They are standing on a corner, in a moment, allowing French-speaking Muggles to pass them by and continue with their lives. He is amazed by the fact that life goes on for these people while it is war-stalled in Britain. HarryPansy.
1. Part 1

**Gift for:** emm718

**Title:** Angels Don't Live Here 1/2

**Author's Name:** Hidden until the reveal

**Rating:** PG-13

**Warnings:** "F" word use four to five times. Blink and you'll miss 'em.

**Disclaimer:** Do I look British to you?

**Beta's name:** floorcoaster, the Numba ONE Beta Diva.

**Author's Note:** Written for the first ever Pansy Parkinson/Harry Potter exchange on LJ as a pinchhit. Because _everyone_ deserves a gift when they sign up for an exchange; I'm just making sure that carries through.

**Prompt: Describe your ideal fic (plus rating): **Fiction. Pg-R. So the song Heroes by David Bowie. I don't want a songfic. No way. But the idea of that song. Two people pretending just for one day.

**Dealbreakers (absolute no-no's):** Harry and Pansy should both be single, no unfaithfulness by either. I don't like cheaters. Non-con or BDSM

**Summary:** They are standing on a corner, in a moment, allowing French-speaking Muggles to pass them by and continue with their lives. He is amazed by the fact that life goes on for these people while it is war-stalled in Britain.

Because there are stories, and then there is Pansy Parkinson, and the blurred line between fact and fiction where Pansy lives.

— — — — — —

When he sees her, she is alone, sitting at a table at the far end of the room. He thinks it is odd. Women do not venture into public unaccompanied in Britain; many have gone missing in these long months of war, claimed as spoils of war for hungry Death Eaters to vent their frustration and their lust.

But this is not Britain, he reminds himself. The people here—these women—do not live in fear of being tarnished and broken as do the people of his home. However, Harry can tell she knows of this fear; she has sequestered herself at the corner table, the side exit to her left and her back to the wall. Though her eyes are focused solely on the book in her lap, she looks up whenever the little bell above the front entrance jingles, announcing the arrival of a new patron. This is how she protects herself, he thinks, how she hides in plain sight. She is afraid here, too.

Pansy's small, unassuming form is blocked from his view when a server brings her another drink, something dark and hot in a shiny white coffee cup. He imagines it is espresso, or cappuccino, or something equally stylish and fresh. She is Pansy Parkinson, and even here, in a small, crowded café in Lyon and away from everything she has ever known, Harry cannot imagine her drinking something as dull as coffee, or even tea. Her beverage is a direct contrast with the lukewarm decaf in his own cup, and Harry picks up his mug and takes a large swallow of the bitter drink. He has no stomach for sugar, cream. Pansy does, and she swirls a dainty spoon in her cup to mix whatever she's added to her drink, speaking cordially with the server in accented French that sounds foreign and jumbled to Harry's ears. He doesn't speak French at all.

The server leaves, taking Pansy's empty cup to the front of the store while the dark-haired woman throws herself back into her book. Pansy picks up her drink, sips once, twice, before placing the delicate cup back on saucer. He can hear the quiet _click_ of the china clanging together from where he sits a few tables over. The sound is loud and unwelcome, and Harry looks down at his own mug, staring at the dregs of his drink as he wonders what to do. He has been watching her for ten minutes, an hour; he doesn't know how long. The bell above the door had signaled her arrival a scant five minutes after he'd taken a seat. He'd known it was her even then, the large shades she was wearing doing nothing to hide the telltale planes of a face he'd memorized long ago. Her features are distinctive, unique—a nose and jaw once too hard in adolescence now softer, maybe even enviable. He'd watched her weave her way through the crowded tables to the one where she currently sits, in disbelief that it is she.

Harry has not seen Pansy Parkinson in two years. He has been busy fighting a war. Even here, six hundred miles away, in France, he is still fighting. He is looking for a weapon—for information—and he knows now that she will give it to him. She is too familiar a being in this foreign land, an unexpected vision from his home—_their_ home. There is no other way that it can be. Remus told him to come here—to the café across from the Hôspital de la Croix-Rousse, at the corner of Rue Hénon—to find the informant.

_"A familiar face," he'd told him. "Wait for as long as it takes. That's all you need to know."_

Pansy is as expected as a bad rash, but her presence alone is enough to confirm her role. There is no such thing as happenstance or coincidence in this world of war. It is her.

Harry is not prepared for this. He normally does not fight in this way; he is unused to waiting, listening, and clandestine encounters in foreign lands of which he knows nothing. Espionage is as alien to him as France, and he finds it harder to reconcile himself with completing the task he has been given now that he has realized he must speak with Pansy. He has never spoken to Pansy more than to level her with a taunting word, jeering that she looked like a _dog_. And he'd only said this after she'd sneered and dropped her own insult about his scar or friends or dead mum and dad, following obediently behind Draco Malfoy and the rest of his Slytherin goons. But Hogwarts is a long time ago—two years and many, many dead friends. He'd lost Ron two years ago, when they were seventeen and untrained and Fenrir Greyback had ripped his best friend nearly in two. Hermione had been snatched away from her bed during the summer following sixth year, an early victory for Voldemort and the bigots that followed his prejudiced teachings. He hasn't heard a word about her since.

Pansy has lost friends as well. Most of the Slytherins in their year are dead, save the deserters and Draco Malfoy, whose contributions to both sides of the conflict are dubious and hard to discern. He wonders if her dead friends mean as much to her as his dead friends mean to him, if they are the weight she shoulders as she sips cappuccino and reads novels in French cafes, hunched in a corner and flinching at every jingle of the bell above the door.

Time changes everyone, but war—blood—does as well, and Harry tells himself that she's changed, that she has to have changed. She is here, after all—in this café, with him, just as Remus had said the informant would be. It doesn't make the situation any easier for him, and he finds himself unable to move from his seat. He does not know how to approach Pansy Parkinson; he has never had to. While their encounters in the Hogwarts halls had been rare, the insults she'd spewed at him were akin to Malfoy's in the sheer venom behind them. Unlike in his encounters with Draco Malfoy, however, Harry had found himself flustered and confused; his rejoining insults were muttered with a pounding heart and pink cheeks that he could never explain. He knows now that there is an intensity to this woman that burns whoever comes near. She's carried this flame around since she was a girl, and even now, Harry can remember how he'd balked at facing such heat.

Harry sips at his coffee. He watches the girl. The server comes by, refills his drink. He wants to thank her but he cannot speak French. He butchers a phrase he heard another patron tell her a few minutes earlier. She looks slightly confused, but she nods politely and wanders away.

"Your accent is appalling."

Pansy is there when he lifts his eyes to the left, book in one hand and drink in the other. She looks as if she's been standing there waiting for him to notice her for the past half-hour, and he feels as if he's suddenly on the spot—as if he's taking a test in Transfiguration and hasn't studied at all. He tells himself he is too old for Transfiguration and fearing Slytherins. But Harry has never been good with women, and he knows this interaction will be even worse because it is _her_.

He wonders how she got there, how he didn't notice, and thinks that if he isn't attentive enough to notice the movement of the person he has spent the past twenty minutes watching, he is surely going to die fighting this war.

Meanwhile, Pansy is smiling and smirking, staring down at him with eyes as blue as he's ever seen and looking wholly amused. "Harry Potter," she says. "Fancy meeting you here."

Harry nods, slowly. There is that heat again; her fire is hot and bright against his face. He feels sweat pool at the corner of his temple. "I could say the same about you."

"I get around," she says coyly, shrugging her boney shoulders. The cup rattles against its saucer from the movement, causing dark liquid to slosh onto the porcelain plate. She frowns at the spill, then looks at him. "May I sit?"

Harry is taken aback by her openness, her friendliness. This is not the Pansy he knows and expects, but if she is risking her life to give him information, there is no reason why _she_ should be rude. After all, if the Light loses the war, she will lose her life. She knows this. She is a Slytherin: self-serving to the end.

She is not pleased with his silence, and annoyance leaks into her features. She levels him with a glare reminiscent of their encounters in school. "If you'd rather I leave…." She trails off.

"No," he tells her, shaking his head and stumbling to make up for his mistake. She cannot leave. She has information that his people—_their_ people—will die without. It is not his job to be here, to participate in this dance of lies and spies. He is a warrior, a soldier. He hasn't the tact necessary for secret meetings and information exchanges. But Snape is dead—ratted out by a captured Mundungus Fletcher and killed on the spot—and there is no one else Remus trusts. Remus has lost too much—Sirius and Tonks and a baby he'll never know—for Harry to let them lose the war, too. "Please," he says, staring straight into her blue orbs. "Sit."

Pansy looks at him, and it's almost as if she's deciding whether he's pathetic enough for her to acquiesce. She holds many things in her hands. Information from the other side is always a matter of life or death for someone, be it members of the Order or the Death Eaters they strike down in a successful raid. Six months ago, Snape gleaned information from their informant that allowed the remaining members of the Weasley clan to be moved to a safe location before Voldemort himself showed up at the Burrow and blasted the home to bits. Though the house was lost, strategically placed Order members managed to strike down Lucius Malfoy during the same ordeal—a victory still celebrated within their ranks.

Harry looks at Pansy. He wonders how it feels to have such power with mere words.

She is rather unassuming, considering the might she possesses from the Death Eater knowledge in her head. Just a woman, Harry thinks, no matter how she seems to stand out in this place. She continues to stare at him as she sits, sliding gracefully into her seat as she places her drink on the table and her book on her lap.

"You look very old, Harry Potter," she says.

He wonders what that means. She is just as old as he is, and he can see the bags beneath her eyes, unmaskable even with the strongest of glamours. He thinks that it is unfair that they are like this, that they have had their youth snatched away just as Hermione had been snatched from her bed that fateful night three summers before. He doesn't say this. He says, "I've seen many things."

She smiles, and Harry feels as if he's just passed a pop quiz. "I don't doubt that you have." She picks up her cup, looking thoughtful. She says, "We're all old." She drinks.

They lapse into silence. Harry doesn't know what he is to do now, how these secret exchanges usually go about. Is he to ask about her health, her day? Make polite small talk before they get serious and talk about Voldemort and Death Eaters, how to end lives and save Aurors? But they were once schoolmates, he remembers, and that must count for something now, after so much time has passed. She was his adversary then, the eager lapdog of Malfoy, the enemy. He finds that Malfoy fits less into that role nowadays, pushed out by the more pressing threat of the Dark Lord.

However, the blond man has followed in his father's footsteps—taken Voldemort's mark and donned a mask in a vow to kill in order to create the Dark Lord's new world order—which makes him a different kind of enemy now. But Draco's role in Voldemort's army is nebulous. He has long since blamed the man for Hermione's disappearance, their not-so-private relationship being the reason the serpentine Lord gave for her disappearance when Harry faced the madman in the months that followed. Though Harry has spent many nights sitting outside the kitchen door in Grimmauld Place, listening to the whispered conversation between Remus and Snape as they discussed the contributions of the young Malfoy to their side of the war. The two men say nothing of him in the official meetings, and _The Daily Prophet_ continues to vilify Draco Malfoy in its issues for every dastardly deed they claim he has done. Harry does not know what to think.

Pansy clears her throat quietly, and he looks up to find her eyes on him, blue and amused. "You look surprised."

He nods slowly. "It's… odd seeing you here," he says honestly. "I didn't expect… well, _you_."

"You sound like my mother," she says. She crosses her legs, pushes her longish bangs out of her face. "She didn't 'expect' me either." She smiles, leans in conspiratorially and says, "I was supposed to be a _boy_. Could you imagine?"

Harry grins. He did not expect this from Pansy, either. "No," he says, "I can't."

"I certainly can't either. I mean, _really_."

The bell above the door jingles, and both of their heads whip in its direction. Two women enter, deeply entrenched in conversation and looking wholly as if they haven't a care in the world.

Pansy looks at him, then down at her purse. It is a large black monstrosity, shiny leather and gold hardware that Harry finds ostentatious but looks completely ordinary on Pansy's arm. She digs into the bag, and Harry can't help but wonder at how much _stuff_ she has in the thing, so much that she cannot find what she seeks. "I'd be a horrible man," she says offhandedly, and Harry doesn't know if she's talking to him or herself.

"Why do you say that?" he asks, watching as she takes a box of fags from her bag and pulls one from the full cardboard carton.

"I don't know," she says, rifling through her bag once again. The unlit cigarette rests between her rosy lips. "I've been scratching boys' eyes out since I've been old enough to walk; I highly doubt that's an acceptable method of combat for a man." Her words are jumbled by the cigarette stuck between her lips. "Merlin's beard, that lighter was right—"

Harry leans forward then, snapping his fingers before her downturned face. The sound captures her attention instantly, and she looks at him, startled, however the smoke wafting from her fag snatches her attention away. She takes it out of her mouth and stares at it for a moment before replacing it betwixt her lips and taking a long drag.

"That… was an eye-opening display," she says, releasing a stream of smoke from her lips. "Thank you."

"Always happy to help," he says.

"Trust me, I know. All of bloody Britain does."

Her words are a little harsh—a little sardonic—and Harry doesn't know what to say.

"I do what I can," Harry tells her quietly. "We _all_ do what we can."

She looks uncomfortable at this statement. She takes the fag from her lips and smashes it in the provided ashtray in the middle of the table. It is a nervous, fidgety move, and he can begin to make out a pattern in her anxious behavior. She continues to smash the cancer stick even after the flame has been extinguished, her white fingers pressing against the dirty ashes in the tray.

The bell jingles once more. Harry watches as she turns to the door again, eyes wide with anxiety he knows so well. It is a man this time, business suit and briefcase with a Muggle cell phone to his ear.

"I should go," she says, standing so quickly her knees bang against the table, causing her drink to spill over the sides of the cup.

Harry watches her, anxiety growing within him. She hasn't told him anything and she is leaving; Remus is going to kill him. "Wait," he says.

"I can't wait," Pansy tells him, dropping the novel into her bag. She hefts the large thing onto her shoulder and looks at him. He is still in his seat. "Well? What are you waiting for? Let's go."

— — — — — —

Pansy likes the Metro. She says she takes it everywhere—even if it's only one stop—because she likes the ride and the people. Or, rather, she likes watching the people. She has pointed out a handful of people and a handful of their flaws in the five minutes since they got on.

It is only two stops so they stand. Pansy doesn't mind; she has a better view of the world from up here anyway.

"Funny what you can tell about a person just by looking," she says, leaning in close to his shoulder as she speaks. He can smell espresso and her perfume, and the combination is so soft and sweet and bitter that he swallows multiple times to remove the taste from his tongue. It remains.

He doesn't know why they are on the Metro; he doesn't know where she is taking him. Remus has told him nothing of how these meetings go about, and since he and Pansy left the café, he has been content to allow her to lead him through the routine. From what he knows, she has been supplying information to the Order for years—perhaps since he's seen her last, at Hogwarts. He wholly believes she knows what she's doing, even though she hasn't done _anything_ yet. They have walked and talked. Awkwardly so on Harry's part, but Harry is always awkward with women, and the fact that Pansy notices—"I never knew," she's said, "that you'd grow up to be such an awkward man"—only makes him wish even more that he'd told Remus 'no'.

They get on at the Metro at Rue Hénon and ride the train to Merlin knows where. Harry waits.

She tells him to look at a man to their left, sitting alone at the back of the car. He is wearing a trench coat and a dusty fedora and is hunched over his knees as he scribbles on a scrap of paper. "He hasn't slept or showered or eaten in days," she tells him.

There is three-day-old stubble on his jaw and a thoroughly down-and-out look to him that can very well confirm Pansy's statement, but Harry doesn't want to agree with her.

He says to her, "Why do you say that?"

"Because he is a jaded author," she exclaims, infectious and fantastic. "He has been writing since he was fifteen, even though his parents discouraged it because they wanted him to spend the extra time helping out in the family business. This is Lyon, so they are into textiles, but _he_ has never had the mind for silk. He wrote his tales in secret until he was old enough for university and told his parents to _piss off_ and pursued his passion in peace." The car pauses a moment. Train traffic, the conductor says over the speaker. They wait.

Pansy continues, "He found journalism through a roommate at school and wrote for papers and magazines while there, because the papers and magazines paid him for his hard news stories. He didn't like it, but he needed the money since his parents wouldn't give him a cent because he has left to _write_. He was amazing at the reporting business though—because he is an _a__mazing_ writer—and was asked to write for a big time Paris paper when he graduated—_Le Monde_. Who would say no?"

Harry does not know what _Le Monde _is, let alone if he'd say 'no' to whatever they had to offer. However, he finds himself wrapped in Pansy's story, watching this man's life unfold as if he's dunked his head into a penseive and is seeing it for himself.

"But he was unhappy in Paris," she says, almost somber. "In Paris, he cannot spend his free time weaving tales of love and woe because it is _Paris_, and it is too big and too noisy. He stays for seven years, smoking and sleeping with different women until he can no longer take the blank pages in his journal and on his desk and quits his job at _Le Monde _because writing means more to him than livelihood. His women leave him, but he doesn't care because he has his stories. Six months pass and he has yet to write a word. His potential—his tales of love and woe—were lost in the long months he spent writing hard news at his hard paper and smoking and sleeping around.

"After a year, he throws his typewriter against the wall. He is convinced that it is the city that keeps his stories at bay, and uses the last of his money to buy a ticket back to Lyon—to the city where he left his tales. He returns to his childhood home, to the family business, but the factory has closed and the windows of his old home have been boarded shut for years. He is frantic, and even though it is three in the morning, he bangs on a neighbor's door to ask what has happened to his family. He is told that his father died shortly after he left for university, and that, with no one to run the business, it soon fell into ruin. His mother died shortly afterwards.

"He is stricken, nauseous from the guilt that he has killed his family and the livelihood that gave him a bed to sleep in and food in his belly as a boy while he pursued a dream that has brought him nothing but despair, and has cast his family into ruin. The neighbor, who remembers him from when he was a boy, asks him if he needs a place to stay, but the man declines, saying he's business to see to before stalking away. He has been on this train ever since, riding the route back and forth as he scribbles on scraps of paper he finds beneath the seats, giving with everything he has to write one of his tales. Because if he does, it will give everything that he's done and all his family has lost meaning. Even if it's just a little."

She is quiet then, her lips set in a sad little line as she contemplates the hunched man. "He is a very sad man."

Harry is quiet, too. He did not expect the melancholy ending to her story. He doesn't feel that he knows her well enough to ask her why she'd tell him this. But the silence stretches on and the train still isn't moving, and he knows he must say _something_ because it is simply his turn.

"Muggles don't use typewriters anymore, Pansy," he tells her, opting for something neutral, true. "They use computers and all sorts of other things to write."

"I know," she says. She looks at him. "But this man isn't really here. What we are seeing is the sadness he left behind after he passed. He's a ghost."

Harry has killed men and stared the single most dangerous wizard in the history of the bloody world straight in the eye on multiple occasions, but he can't help the chill that makes his way up his spine at her words. He looks at the man, taking note of how small and alone he is, how no one truly notices him at all. The man could vanish right now and no one would notice, except Harry, because he's the only one who's looking. The train begins to move once again, sending he and Pansy jolting forward from the sudden movement. He plants his feet squarely on the ground to steady himself, then places his hands on her shoulders to prevent her from falling flat on her bum. She looks at him then, surprised, and he wonders if she thought he would let her fall. He asks her this.

"Yes," she says, "I did."

She's smiling though, and he realizes now that Pansy hasn't been pointing out flaws; she's been telling stories. She's lying. He wonders what this means in terms of her credibility as an Order informant. But he doesn't have much time to think because she takes his arm and pulls him out of the train, and he finds himself thinking more of how bloody _pushy_ she is rather than things that matter.

"Our stop," she tells him, skillfully weaving her way through the people waiting to enter the train. He wants to tell her that she doesn't have to _pull_ him, but realizes that is stupid and makes him sound like a brat. He thinks her opinion of him is bad enough without knowing anything that's _true_. He wonders if he's always been so concerned about what women think of him, even if they happen to be Pansy Parkinson. He reminds himself again that he has never had any luck with girls.

He is so busy thinking that he does not pay attention to where they are going. When he finally notices that the foot-traffic has begun to thin, he wonders where she is taking him. Perhaps to some secret location—the foreign Order base where she stays while she creeps between Death Eater meetings and gathers information to give to her contact. He finds himself intrigued at the prospect.

"Where are we going?" he asks, looking around at the scant buildings in the area, wondering which would hold this secret base.

But there is no secret base. She says, "The arena."

"The _what_?"

"The arena. In Roman times, it was an oval-shaped structure that housed almost twenty thousand people to watch events. It had tiers and seats with—"

"I know what it is," he says, annoyed. "Why are we going there?"

She glances at him, puzzled. "Why not?"

Her obtuseness frustrates him. He realizes then that there is no secret location or Order base. There will be no exchange of words in the dark underground room where Pansy makes her life as she collects lifesaving information. Not there. The arena is merely a place—a trip to take. She will tell him nothing there. She will make him wait.

He remembers that he didn't want to accept this mission, that he didn't want to travel so far from home. He remembers Remus' face, his tired, sad eyes saying, _"Harry, please"_ repeatedly until he'd agreed. He had known then that _this_ is not what he does—is not how he fights this war—and he thinks again and again and _again_ that he should have told Remus to shove off and just said _'no_.'

He stops walking. "I'm quite sure," he says slowly, cautiously, "that whatever there is that needs to be said between us can be said here."

"Here?" she repeats, unconvinced.

Harry looks around, noting that, while there aren't many people around, the area is still too public for the kind of meeting they are to have. "Maybe not here," he amends. He sighs, running a hand through his messy hair in frustration. The coffee shop is half a mile and an hour away, and he can no longer listen to her idle chatter and made-up stories when they have a job to do and a meeting to have so he can go back home. "Why are you doing this?"

She looks at him, eyes honest and wide. "What am I doing?"

"This," he says, waving his arm around at the few people milling about. They look happy, as if they are having a good time and he cannot take their happiness. "You don't have to do this. You didn't need to bring me here."

"Didn't I?" He doesn't say anything, and she arches a dark brow in question. "I recall _you_ approaching _me_ in the café."

"I didn't approach you—" he denies vehemently.

"You didn't have to." She is calm, assured. It is contagious; he can feel it brushing against his skin like an unexpected breeze. "You need something, don't you?"

He nods slowly. She knows what he needs.

"I don't have much," she says, looking down at the ground as if she can find what he's looking for there. "I'm too selfish to give more than I have, but it's been two years, yeah? Hogwarts doesn't matter anymore. Too many people are dead. There is this moment, and the next, and the rest of the day. We've hours at our expense," she says. "You needn't rush it, Potter. Harry."

His name rolls off her tongue so effortlessly that he can close his eyes and believe she's been saying it for years. It speaks to him in a way no voice ever has, even though he's sure she's never said it before in all her life. It's as if she's been whispering to him in his dreams.

It is a new and scary sensation. She is looking at him, and he fancies that her eyes are almost imploring, wanting him to agree to whatever she's asking.

He doesn't know what she's asking.

He starts, almost, when he feels her dainty hand wrap around his forearm, placing her other hand over it to clasp his arm firmly within her grip. She is looking at him. "Shall we?"

He hears Remus then, the constant voice of reason in his head making an appearance once again with the parting words he'd given Harry before he'd embarked on his trip the day before:

_"We all need peace, Harry," he'd said. "Go to Lyon and find some, even if only for the day. You'll come back a different man."_

He turns to Pansy and nods. Harry leads the way.

— — — — — —

"Why do you come here?"

Pansy shrugs. "It's quiet."

_The Amphithéâtre des Trois Gaules doesn't exactly seem like the place one would come to find 'quiet.' It is an old and decrepit place, more ruins than anything and probably an unsafe place to sit. It __is__ quiet, however it's quite eerie as well, almost as if the past finds itself creeping up on the present here, mixing to a point where one can't tell which truly belongs. _

_The city officials seem to know this as well, as the amphitheater is fenced from the outside, barbed wire topping the chain link fence to prevent anyone from sneaking in. He'd been perturbed by this fact when he first saw it, thinking that they'd taken the Metro only to __look__ at the place. However, limitations placed upon Muggles were usually no problem for magic folk. Only, Pansy didn't use magic at all to get pass the fence. There's a hole in the barricade if you walk two to three minutes off the main road. They snuck in through there._

Now they sit on one of the lower tiers, away from the sight of the few people viewing the area from the fence at the top of the hill.

"They killed Christians here," she tells him. "Martyrs. Story has it that they threw St. Blandine to the lions here, but the lions wouldn't eat her. They replaced the lions with bulls, but the bulls wouldn't kill her either."

"Why not?"

She shrugs. "Maybe God told them not to. The animals, I mean."

"God?" he asks. He didn't know Pansy believed in such things. "Do you believe in God?"

"I believe in something," she says. "Something more than Merlin and Morgana Le Fay. Something not as real."

This confuses him. "If it's not as real, then why believe?"

"Why does most the world?" She pauses. "People just need something, Harry. It's okay for you to go without it, because you have your wand and your conviction that all you're all mighty and powerful."

"I'm not all mighty and powerful," he says quickly.

"Yes, but what about the Muggles?" she rejoins. "They don't have magic wands or _anything_. All they have is their faith. And you know what the fucked up part is? No matter how much they believe, they'll never have anything that they can hold in their hands. They don't have _wands_, Harry. They've got to believe in God and pretend that it's enough."

"You have a wand," he states quietly.

"It's not enough," she says.

He notes then that he hasn't seen her use magic all day, and doesn't think she has in a very long time.

"What happened to her?" he asks awkwardly.

"Who?"

"St. Blandine."

"The Roman soldiers," she tells him. "They got fed up with the bloody lions and bulls and killed her themselves." She makes a slicing motion with her hands, and he doesn't know if she means to be comical or grotesque. "Cut her down with their swords."

"Oh," he says dumbly. She makes him feel naked, insecure, and stupid.

"No," she tells him, shaking her head. "You're missing the point. The Roman soldiers _had_ to take matters into their own hands. They _had_ to kill St. Blandine because the animals would not. And it makes no sense, Harry—it makes no sense at all. But that's where God comes from. That's what I believe in."

The cats appear about this time, when he's wondering what her stories mean and if they're true. It is a only a kitten at first, a black ball of fuzz that stares at him curiously from a ruined stone bench a few tiers down, hopping up the steps to perch at Harry's side. He offers the kitten his hand, and the kit licks it enthusiastically. There is movement in his periphery, and he turns to see another cat, and then a dozen. They mill about at the bottom of the theater, mewing and cleaning their fur in quiet contentment. They are all black.

He turns to Pansy, a question in his eyes.

"I know," she says. "It's bizarre. They're here every time I come."

"Do you feed them?" he asks.

She kicks a pebble with the tip of her shoe, and the small stone makes a quiet echo as it falls a few tiers. The cats at the bottom of the amphitheater all look to the spot where it lands. "No," she responds. "I don't interfere."

This surprises him. He doesn't know what to say. They are quiet.

"There is another place I like to go here. It's another Roman ruin, but it's good place to go when I want to watch people. Something between here and the metro."

He scratches the kitten behind its ears. "Really?"

She nods, leaning back against the crumbling stone seat as she looks out at the ruined history before her. "There are two theatres there, and the city actually uses it for concerts and events in the summer."

He doesn't know what to say. He asks, "Where is it?"

"On Fourvière."

Her words mean nothing because he has never been to Lyon and doesn't know what Fourvière is. "Are we going there, too?"

She cocks her head to the side. "Would you like to?" A large, older cat wanders onto her lap, looking up at Pansy with expectant green eyes. She smiles. "It wouldn't be too bad right now, in the spring," she tells him, rubbing the cat beneath the chin and behind its ears, causing it to emit a pleased purr. Harry looks down at the kitten in his own lap, noting that the kit is far more interested in clawing at his wrist then purring like its older companion. "I went there once during the summer, the heavy traveling season, and there were a group of American tourists prancing about and proclaiming that they were kings of Rome. It was appalling."

Harry frowns, his brows furrowed in confusion. He asks, "Aren't you a tourist?"

"I've been here _two years_, Harry," she says. Her voice is so loud and unexpected that the kitten scurries away from him, ducking into a hole in the stone seating the row below, its furry dark ears the only thing visible from where Harry sits.

"Since Hogwarts then?" he asks.

She stops pampering the cat, digging through her bag once again. The cat mews. "Since Hogwarts."

He is surprised by this as well. He knows that Snape has been to Copenhagen and Bucharest and Rome meeting his informant—_Pansy_. He doesn't understand why if she's been here all along.

"Why?" he asks.

She pulls a fag from her purse, looking at him as she lights it herself with her reclaimed lighter. She takes a drag and releases it, long and slow. "You ask a lot of questions, Harry."

"I find you have a lot to say."

She peers at him, surprised, and he looks down at the kitten's ears because he's surprised at well. He doesn't want her to know.

"I do. Half of it doesn't mean anything."

"I beg to differ."

She's vaguely annoyed at this, and she says, "Well, good for you. If you think my lies mean anything, good for _you_."

"Lies?" he repeats.

She rolls her eyes. "You don't understand anything," she clucks.

He counters, "You don't make any sense."

"I suppose I don't." She takes another drag from her cigarette. She flicks it, looks at him blandly. "My life is a steaming heap of shite, Harry."

"I can empathize," he says. His life holds frightening similarities to a pile of shite too.

"That's why I'm in Lyon," she says. "This is my lie."

— — — — — —

"I didn't expect it would be you."

She is focused on the streetlight, the crosswalk, and the car making an illegal right turn twenty-feet from where they stand. By this point, they are good and thoroughly lost, the maze of streets unrecognizable to even her, and she's been here for two years. After they'd left the arena, they'd boarded the metro. After two transfers, they were headed in the right direction, but a conversation about old Professor Flitwick's bad toupee had distracted Pansy, and they'd missed their stop. Instead of getting back on the opposite way, she'd spun around in a circle, her skirt billowing out around her in a wide arc, before pointing to the left—"East," she'd said—and began walking in that direction, pulling him along.

She'd seemed to notice his expression at being manhandled by her and said, "I'm sorry, Harry, I'm sorry. I'm not good at these things. This is only way I know _how_."

And Harry could empathize with that, too, because he didn't know what he was doing either. He'd let her pull him along.

She'd begun chatting then, light and amiable and amused, and Harry had realized that he quite liked the combination. It was different to be around her when she wasn't sneering or insulting him. It was as if he had never met her at all, as if Hogwarts was a figment of his imagination and he was spending his time with a new person entirely.

But the metro stop is nearly an hour away now. While Harry is no stranger to travelling by foot, as the time has passed, Pansy has spoken less and less. He has felt her anxiety grow as they continued, and it pulses now like a dangerous beast, reaching its sharp claws through its cage in an effort to escape.

She does not know where they are, and the loss of control makes her edgy and anxious. It is steam in a kettle ready to sing. All he can think is that he's _seen_ this in so many people before, and can easily read the signs—her behavior in the café, the cigarettes—knows she's just as clinically restless as Lavender Brown, who once became so paralyzed by her fear that she stopped functioning entirely on a mission. She ran away from the group, hiding in a corner until she could breathe, until it passed. Bellatrix Lestrange struck her down before it could.

Remus says it's more of a Muggle thing, some nervous mind problem that makes people fretful and uneasy, and in the case of Lavender Brown, completely inhibits her from acting. He doesn't think that Pansy's problem is as bad as Lavender Brown's, but he can see that she's on the verge of a full out attack. She makes a notable effort to remain calm.

She looks at him—if only for a moment—with her rapidly shifting eyes.

He talks, to keep her calm. "I didn't," he says.

"You've said that already."

Harry shrugs, then thinks that it is stupid for him to shrug because she is not looking at him, and wouldn't have seen the gesture anyway. "Maybe I'm in shock."

"Maybe," she says. "Is it because I am a ghost?"

Her statement startles him. He imagines that Pansy Parkinson compares herself to many things—gems and precious metals that avaricious beings give so high a value—but never to a ghost. Especially not after the story she told of the man on the train.

"You're a ghost now?" he asks, intrigued.

"You've not seen me in two years, Harry," she reminds him. Her hand grips the crook of his arm, and she pulls him across the street. She is small but fierce, and he can feel the power beneath her little fingers as she drags him down the block. "Given the time that has elapsed since you've last seen me—" She looks up at a street sign on the west corner, then the one on the east. They cross again. He lets her lead. "—I daresay I am nearly a ghost to you."

She's looking around, not frantically but intently, and finally sees something that brings a faint smile to her lips. Nothing looks different to Harry, but she relaxes visibly, her shoulders slumping at the release of tension. Harry relaxes too, glad that she has not freaked out.

"I think we're on equal footing," he tells her. He is smiling. He can't hide it. "It isn't as if you've seen me during that time, either."

"Perhaps I have," she replies loftily, the teasing tone back once again. She stops and flourishes her arm. "The _**Cimetière de Loyasse,**_ the burial place of the rich and famous of Lyon."

He hadn't been paying very close attention to where they were, but when he follows her gaze, he's stunned to see a large gate flanked by what looks like two sentry houses.

Her smile widens. "I haven't stalked you, Harry. I've spent the last two years drinking coffee and reading smutty French romances in crowded cafes."

"Is that all?" he asks. He's quite sure she's been up to much, much more.

Her eyes widen in mock outrage. "My _word_, Mr. Potter. You're quite anxious for me to hang my dirty wash in the air, aren't you?"

"Merely trying to clear the air," he says elusively, eyeing the long rows of fantastic graves as they walk on.

The grip on his arm tightens until he looks at her. "Don't you know it's bad form to ask a lady to reveal all her secrets on the first date?"

He stumbles then, blushing. "First _what_?"

She giggles, a quiet, twittering noise he remembers from school. "I won't tell your girl. News of this little outing might send Girl Weasley into a fury, and we can't have that, can we? She might call off the wedding."

He doesn't appreciate her humor, or the reminder of Ginny, who's currently nursing an infant that isn't his. "Don't worry," he tells her, "there's no 'girl' to rile up."

Her dark brows rise in surprise and she looks repentant, but Harry cannot imagine Pansy Parkinson being apologetic about anything she's said that may have caused him pain, and tells himself that he hasn't seen the expression at all.

Hesitantly, she asks, "Is she dead?"

He shakes his head. "Married."

Her lips form the shape of a perfect, surprised 'o', and Harry thinks that he should be proud of himself, because he has shocked Pansy. "She's jumped ship then?" she says.

Something in him is amused by her wording, her tact. "Soon as she could."

He'd found the redhead shagging the life out of Dean Thomas—her _ex_, his old _roommate_—in a cupboard in Grimmauld Place sometime last year. It'd been the middle of July, halfway between the anniversary of Hermione's abduction and his eighteenth birthday. He'd heard the ruckus coming from the closet as he'd wandered into the kitchen for a late night cup of tea to put him to sleep; had known it was Ginny when he heard her moaning '_oh, Dean!'_ over and over again from outside the tiny space.

He hadn't confronted them. Later, he told himself he'd been in too much shock to do so. A part of him knew it was some sick form of torture, the traitorous voice in the back of his mind railing at him victoriously that _this_ was why he needn't get close to anyone in this world at all. He'd sat in the darkened front room with a bottle of Firewhisky and an aching soul as he listened to them go at it all night long.

"She's happy," he says stoically. This is what Neville tells him when they talk about Ginny.

Neville says, _"If nothing else, be happy for that."_

Neville is right, but Harry does not care because he _hates_ that Ginny is happy. He does not think that it is fair that she gets to be happy when he has the world and everyone in it resting on his shoulders and no one there to soothe his crying, pained heart. He doesn't think it is fair that she has found happiness fucking a man Harry had once called a friend in his own freaking _house_. He is miserable. He is a bad person because he wants her to be, too.

"Does that matter?" she asks.

He shrugs again. He doesn't care if she doesn't see it.

She says, "It doesn't matter."

He looks at her. "What really does?"

There is an insignificant pause, during which Harry wants to bash his head into a building wall. Pansy is still looking at him.

"You thought you were going to marry her."

He closes his eyes, almost as if to ward off the pain. "I did."

"You didn't marry her."

"Dean Thomas did."

She snorts. "That's almost an _i__nsult_."

He laughs then, quick and unexpected. When he looks down at her, she's still staring and he's thankful—sort of—for the effort. "He was probably a better shag," he offers humorlessly.

She is scandalized, incredulous. "Who cares?" she says. "You're Harry bloody Potter!"

He smiles sadly. "Doesn't mean much, really. Not when it comes to this love rubbish."

She huffs. "Who needs love when you've notoriety on your side?"

He has never been more thankful for a Slytherin response in all his life.

— — — — — —


	2. Part 2

**Title:** Angels Don't Live Here 2/2

**Rating:** PG-13

— — — — — —

"Where are we going?"

They are standing on a corner, in a moment, allowing French-speaking Muggles to pass them by and continue with their lives. He is amazed by the fact that life goes on for these people while it is war-stalled in Britain.

Harry does not know his way around Lyon. He has never been outside of the UK in all his life, save a trip to Denmark three years back to bury Tonks near her father, because Ted Tonks was Danish and dead and Andromeda wanted them to be buried together.

Remus, who was alone because Tonks was _dead_, had said the trip to France would be good for him, a holiday away from the shadows creeping behind him in Britain. Harry had thought the shadows would follow him wherever he went. To his surprise, they haven't. The only part of the war that he's brought with him are his memories, certain moments in time that are painful to remember because it will kill his soul if he forgets.

Voldemort is too absorbed with his operation in England to extend it to France, and its people have carefree spirits that shine on their very skin. Harry wishes that he can touch them—grasp them within his own hands so he can claim it for himself. It isn't so easy. However, the more time he spends with Pansy Parkinson, the more he feels something within him begin to release. Her conversation is easy; it is awkward in its invasiveness. Like a Legilimens trying to probe his mind, but fluid like the Saône River, always there and flowing as if it didn't know how to do anything else. It is nearing evening; he's been walking with her for hours, and still nothing.

They have passed many streets and pushed through many crowds and stopped once, twice to admire a view. She knows where they are because of the rivers. The Saône is beautiful, and Pansy describes it as an easy woman—a good wife—far more tranquil and welcoming than her sister, the River Rhône to the east.

"I came to France on a holiday," she has told him. "It was June and we'd just graduated and my mum was driving me mad with all this talk of Theodore Nott. It was 'Theo darling' this and 'Theo darling' that—every sodding moment of every sodding day was filled with Theodore, how fantastic he was, and why I should marry him."

Harry doesn't know if he should be surprised by this. Everyone knew of how Theodore Nott had pawed at the hem of Pansy's robes while they were in Hogwarts, yearning to get a taste of what Draco Malfoy seemed to own despite the cool distance he kept between Pansy and himself. "He asked you to marry him?" he asks.

"I'm not sure," she says, and she sounds tired in the way Harry feels when he thinks about girls and women. "I'm inclined to believe my father told him to ask me to marry him, though Theo did the talking all on his own."

He holds back a chuckle, not knowing if he should laugh when she looks so perturbed by the remembrance.

"I'm going to tell you a story," she says then.

He wonders if he should believe her. She never begins her lies with the pretense of them being a story.

"When I was twelve or thirteen and home for the summer months, my father invited the Notts over for dinner. My mother does not like Hortense Nott; thinks she is a ninny. Though Mum is hardly one to judge anyone, for she surely isn't the brightest candle of the bunch, but that's not important. What's important is that my father _knows_ my mother does not like Hortense Nott, but he invites the entire family over anyway because he does business with Nott Senior and likes to annoy my mother." She glances at him meaningfully. "They've that sort of relationship.

"So the Notts are over. The men are in a meeting in my father's study—Death Eater business and all that. My mother and Hortense are in the sunroom. Hortense is talking and my mother is drinking, because that is what my mother does when Hortense talks. _I_ am charged with keeping young Theodore and his older brother, Barnabas, company. Theodore is awkward, tall, and pimply then. Barnabas is seventeen and has just been expelled from Durmstrang. You see, Barnabas has a penchant for trouble when it comes to the female variety, and even the rowdy lot in Bulgaria cannot take his schemes."

Harry feels uneasy; his skin is beginning to prick with awareness of where this may be going, and he doesn't like it one bit.

She continues, "Needless to say, I've no interest in the Nott boys. They are far too dark for my taste, and back then, I am so in love with Draco that I hardly notice anyone else. But my father demands that I entertain them, and I do not disobey my father—not then. So we sit in the library together. I've never been alone in a room with two boys, and even though Barnabas makes me nervous, I have been in class with Theo for a long time. I know that he is harmless, and I try to be calm. I pen a letter to Millicent. Theodore pretends to read. But Barnabas… Barnabas looks bored, and you should know, Harry: it is _never_ good when Barnabas is bored."

He is wrapped in her story once again, stuck in a moment watching young Pansy and the Nott brothers in a dark library room, a sense of foreboding clawing at the pit of his gut.

"He decides that the three of us are in need of some activities to liven the mood in the room. Theo is intrigued, of course, because he is intrigued by anything his brother says. I am contemplating leaving the room. But as soon as I approach the door, Barnabas blocks it with his stupid, hulking body, and says I must participate in his game before I am allowed to leave."

"It is less of a game and more of a demeaning demand for me to give his younger brother his first kiss. I protest, of course. I still have virgin lips then, and I've been saving my first kiss for Draco—not pimple-faced Theodore Nott. But I am a twelve, thirteen-year-old girl stuck in a room with two boys who are quite obviously capable of overpowering me. I know what my chances are."

He can feel magic burn beneath his skin, anger at Barnabas and Theodore and the lifestyle she once lived for subjecting her to this sort of physical and emotional distress.

He does not realize that the air has begin to crackle with his escaping emotion until she takes his hand, holding it between her own as she smiles at him sadly.

"Easy there, duckie," she tells him. "No need to start with that."

"You kissed him," he says, almost accusingly.

She rolls her eyes. "You're missing it _again_, Harry. _He_ kissed _me_." She looks at him, and it is as if she's trying to impart her meaning onto him by the sheer intensity in her eyes. "Barnabas tells his brother—quite plainly—to go at it, and the next thing I know, I am on the floor and Theo is on top of me, trying to plant a wet one on me for all he is worth."

"His brother _watched_?" he asks in outrage.

"His brother _tells_ him to, Harry. What do you think he is going to do? Grow a conscious midway through his little game?"

"Why didn't you scream?"

"No one would've heard. I hardly live in a cupboard."

He ignores the jib, still unconvinced by her words. "You could've done something," he says.

She shrugs. "I suppose I could have. Though I must say, I wasn't too keen on interfering with Barnabas Nott and his schemes. I didn't want to be kissed by Theo, but I knew a kiss would be better than something else."

His heart drops. "No."

"It was only a rumor, but I was inclined to believe it. That's why Nott Senior couldn't buy Barnabas' way back into Durmstrang. And Dumbledore certainly wasn't going to allow him to attend Hogwarts with a rape charge on his record."

He cannot believe this. It is the most horrible story she's told him yet. "He _raped_ someone?"

"Of course not," she says. "He didn't have to. Barnabas coerced the boy into believing that it was what he wanted to do."

"Imperius?" he ventures. "It had to be the Imperius. No one would _ever_—"

He stops when he sees her looking at him, thoughtful and sad.

"Does it really matter?"

He sighs. No, it didn't. How it happened didn't change anything.

She's playing with his hand now, tracing the lines on his palms as if she's telling his fortune, diving his future with a glance at the lines on his battle-worn palms. "I get kissed a few times," she says. "It's not so bad, just quick with some slob, and when my father comes in—"

"Your _father_?"

"—he believes Barnabas when the lying cad tells him that he walked in on us like this, wrapped up in some childish lover's embrace and completely unsuspecting of what we were doing at all." She pauses. Her eyes are distant, vacant—lost in that moment and that story and the pain from so many years before. "I am crying, but my father thinks this is because I have been caught. He scolds me, tells me that I am worth nothing to him tainted, and that if I'd changed my mind about the union with Draco, then I should have come to him so he could've severed his ties with Lucius Malfoy and have a new agreement drawn up with Theo's father."

The fact that her father accepted Barnabas' lies—after his history with girls was plainly known—echoes in Harry's mind. That she is not bothered by this upsets him even more. "Agreement?" he echoes dully, numbly.

She squeezes his hand and nods. "Marriage. I'm his only child and a girl at that. Do you know what that _means_ when you're born into a family like mine? He'd been trying to auction me off to the highest bidder since I was born. The Malfoys were certainly the most well-connected of my options, and Lucius Malfoy agreed to the union between Draco and I right away. But my father cares little for the elder Malfoy, and the Notts are pretty well-off themselves. He probably thought he was being kind by suggesting he break the contract between himself and Malfoy and start anew with Theodore's dad. He thought I was in love with the snot. Silly him."

"Your father agreed to the union, then?"

She gives him a sidelong glance. "Well, they _are_ in the same kind of business: murder and pillaging and all sorts of unsavory activity." She sighs. "After Draco, Theodore was my father's first choice. Barnabas would've been, but he was already betrothed to Daphne Greengrass."

He is more than intrigued by this, as any mention of the younger Malfoy immediately puts him on alert for any new information about his questionable behavior. "What happened to Draco?"

She looks at him, an eyebrow quirked. "Draco?" she says. "Getting chummy with the enemy, are we?"

Harry blushes, feeling silly and _caught_. "_Malfoy_," he says forcefully, correcting himself. "What happened to _Malfoy_?"

Her smile recedes, her lips pulling into something wan and sad. "What indeed?" she says.

"You were friends." Harry is prying. He knows he is prying. Pansy need only give him any information she has collected for the Order as of late, not answer any personal questions he has about an old schoolyard rival. "Don't you know?"

She shrugs a little then. The movement is jerky and unnatural, and she looks small, so small—almost as if she's about to break. She looks at him. "I'm afraid he may be lost."

— — — — — —

Pansy lives in a ritzy Muggle hotel right on the banks of the Saône. She doesn't say "live," and she tells him to stop saying it, too, because she's only in Lyon on a holiday and she's just _staying there_. It's just been two _years_.

She found the place after she stumbled out of a pub—quite drunk—on her first night in the city. She'd prepared for something like this before the drinking had begun, and when she'd happened upon the expensive Muggle hotel, she'd tripped up to the counter, handed the concierge some bills, and was escorted up to her room.

"Only a holiday," she keeps saying. "I only paid for two nights, Harry."

She is smoking again, uncomfortable like a lone butterfly somehow stuck in the late autumn chill. Butterflies die in the fall.

"Short trip," he says. He doesn't know what she wants from him. He doesn't know what he has to give anymore.

"A holiday, Harry, a _holiday_. Mum was driving me _crazy_, and I just wanted to get away."

She taps her fag to shake off the loose ash that has accumulated on its tip, then brings it bag to her lips and takes a long drag. She has nearly finished her pack in the short hours they've been together. The smell—among other things—has begun to bother him.

But she has not answered his question. She has spent the past half-hour avoiding it as she led him through the city to this church. "A cathedral, Harry," she says, "Don't you know your churches?"

He doesn't answer. He says, "Where are we going?"

She looks up back at him, annoyed. "Must you ask so many questions?"

He rejoins, "I only ask because you won't answer me."

She huffs and rolls her eyes. "You don't take many holidays, do you?" she asks dryly, stopping against a low, stone wall.

He blinks, confused. "What's that to do with anything?"

She moves then, and his attention is drawn to what she's been hiding. However, he's been looking at her the entire time, so she hasn't been keeping the sight from him, at all; he simply hadn't noticed.

Now his mouth opens in a silent exclamation of awe, his breath very nearly taken away at the sight of the vista before him.

"Lyon is a beautiful city, Harry," she says softly, pulling him gently to the wall. "Far more beautiful than London." She smiles, a mother imparting wisdom on her young, stupid child. "Appreciate the views, the moments."

He is struck by that word: moment. Though he wonders how she is able to sit here, unbothered by the world passing her by, as he stares over the ancient city, he thinks he's starting to understand. Still, she's almost _too_ calm, _too_ relaxed and at ease. He asks her, "What is your secret?"

"To what, pray tell?" She doesn't look at him, instead smiling serenely at something far below.

"Serenity."

She laughs and Harry frowns. He'd thought he was spot on.

"How do you sit and appreciate your moments, let the world completely pass you by?"

She is looking up at the sky, watching powdery cumulus clouds drift along. "There's something beautiful about inactivity, Harry," she says after a moment. "It takes a lot to sit and watch."

He looks at her, feeling as if there is much that was said with her simple words. He doesn't know what.

"I'm at a loss," he says cautiously. "Even looking at this … I don't know how to sit still."

She looks at him then, smiling. "Of course you don't. You're fighting a war."

"We're all fighting, Pansy."

She shakes her head. "We're not. Some of us are here in the moment, watching the blood pass us by." She closes her eyes and inhales, long and deep. "I don't know where we're going."

— — — — — —

The end up at Place Bellecour, because it is big and beautiful at night, and she says that Harry can't say he's been to Lyon without visiting Bellecour. The statement doesn't hold her usual verve and light. Instead, it is sad, heavy with all the things they want to ask and won't say. The sun is sinking low on the west horizon. There aren't many moments left in this day.

"Did you love Malfoy?"

"Yes." She looks at him, frowns. "Not in the way you're thinking."

Children rush around them, giggling in the twilight as their parents chase them through the crowded square. It makes him think of Ginny and Dean, of their family and the happy nights they can spend in the lively square of Place Bellecour, being whole. He cannot have this happiness. He realizes then that Pansy can—that she can marry Malfoy or Theodore Nott and start a family, spend a happy evening in Place Bellecour just as Ginny can. But Ginny doesn't matter; he is more disturbed by Pansy having that experience with those men. They have only been here for twenty minutes, but Bellecour is already theirs; she cannot share it with anyone else. The thought that she might makes his hands shake.

"I don't believe you."

She sighs. "You shouldn't. You shouldn't believe anything I say."

He is quiet for a moment, unsure of what that means. Despite her stories, her supposed lies, she is still his weapon, his informant. She is the solitary firefly blinking in an empty jelly jar at Privet Drive, his only companion in the darkness of the cupboard beneath the stairs. He believes everything. "Do you still love him?"

Someone is singing, a sultry rendition of "La Vie En Rose." Harry knows this because Remus plays it every night, putting the old record on the dusty player in his room as he ignores the rest of the people in the house and pretends his wife is still alive.

Her eyes remain focused on the statue of Louis XIV, almost as if she can see her face reflected off its dark surface.

"I don't know. When I think of Draco, I think of Hogwarts and the war and all of my dead friends."

She flicks her cigarette in the direction of the traffic. Someone steps on it immediately, and it's almost as if the fag never existed at all. "I miss him."

He thinks that is not an answer at all. He thinks that she still loves him. He wants to quietly retch.

"He isn't what you think he is," she says suddenly, and her words bounce off the water and the sides of his head, creating a deafening echo he fears will make his ears begin to bleed.

"Don't," he says. He cannot take the redemption of Draco Malfoy. Not now. Not from her.

"He isn't killing Aurors and members of the Order," she says. She is facing him, and he imagines the insistency in her round baby blues, begging him to believe her. Someone is still singing, words he can only make out because he's heard them night after night in his room at Grimmauld Place. And Remus' voice, whispering the English translation in the silence of the night:

"_And from the things that I sense, now I can feel within me, my heart that beats."_

Harry doesn't want his heart to beat. He doesn't want Pansy to _talk_.

"He's saving them."

— — — — — —

The sun has set. Place Bellecour is alight with light and souls.

Harry's heart is heavy. She has just attempted to redeem Draco Malfoy right in front of his eyes, and something pulses dangerously within him at the prospect. He doesn't tell her this. There are many things he doesn't tell her and many things she doesn't say as well. He finds that he wants to scream, but his words are choked behind the gag that the thought of her and Draco Malfoy pulls over his lips. He cannot think of it.

Instead, he asks her, "Why didn't you want to marry Nott?"

"I don't love Theodore Nott."

"Who needs love when you have notoriety?" he mocks.

She looks at him, angry and spurned. "Fuck off, Harry. Why didn't you charge into that cupboard and knock Thomas' lights out and call your girl a slag when you heard them shagging that night?"

"Who says I didn't?" he says defensively. He has not told her that he didn't confront Ginny and Dean. He hates that she infers this.

"Come off it. You're too much of a lily-livered milksop to so much as look at anyone in the wrong way, let alone actually confront the girl you thought you were going to bleeding _marry_ for having a go with another man."

"It's been a whole _year_," he tells her. "I'm _over_ that."

She sneers at him. "You'll _never_ be over it."

Harry can feel something within him twist painfully at her words, and he doesn't know if it's because she's right, or because she said them at all. He's thinking of Ginny and Dean and Pansy and _everything_ all at once now, and the static in his head is so bloody _loud_ that he's afraid it just may make his ears begin to bleed. She is too right and too raw and too real for him to stand with her in another of her moments and pretend there isn't something that they're supposed to be doing.

"Give it to me," he says then.

She glares at him. "I have nothing for you, Harry."

He hasn't any patience for Pansy and her trips around Lyon and her words that make no sense. "I'm _done_," he tells her. "You're a bloody _mess_ and I'm _done_."

"Shut up," she snaps.

"That's why Malfoy left you," he tells her, almost cruelly. "You're a _mess_ and he couldn't take you holding him down."

She shakes her head vehemently, and he is happy—so happy—that she is as upset as he is. "He left me for _Granger_."

"I don't care," he says. "Give it to me."

"What do you want?"

"Whatever you have," he says. "Whatever you've collected. _Anything_. Remus said you may not have much information for us, but he doesn't care. Just tell me what you have so I can _go_."

She is staring at him, looking at him as if he is something wild and dangerous that should be caged and locked in a dark room. Realization flashes in her eyes. "You idiot," she says and he can't decide if she's talking to him or to herself.

He stares at her stonily, unwilling to respond to her retorts until she gives him what he came for.

But she is crying then, fat, wet tears dripping from her blue eyes and down the sides of her face, a testament to some unfounded belief she once held in him that he has now betrayed. "Is that what you thought?" she asks. "You _idiot_, is that what you thought?"

"Look," he starts.

"You're looking for a spy, not _me_!"

He wavers, flustered by her tears and confused by her words.

"I'm not like _him_!" she screeches, red with rage. "I won't turn my back on everything I've known. I've run away but I—I—" She breaks off then, her bottom lip trembling with the need to release a sob. "He says I am weak and maybe I am, but I'd rather be weak than sign the death warrants of my own family and everyone I have ever known!"

She's going through her bag then, her movements jerky and uncoordinated as she searches for another fag. Somehow, he knows that he has fucked up.

"Pansy," he says.

"Shut up, Harry. Potter." She cannot find her cigarettes. She does not remember that she has smoked them all. She runs a trembling hand through her hair instead, breathing huffily as she looks at him. Tears continue to fall from her eyes. "You're so _stupid_. Just because I was there—because you saw me and you know me you _assumed_—" She breaks off then, her face crumpling in an expression of pain. "I can't believe I thought so much of you. That you would want to… want to—"

She breaks off then, turns away from him and heads into the crowd. He follows her. Her words have slowly filled him with a late understanding of her role in the war and his life and the reason why she is in Lyon.

"_No," she responds. "I don't interfere."_

She's hiding. From Voldemort and her parents and Theodore Nott. She has been telling him this all along, explaining why she couldn't be strong and take a stand.

She is no spy for the Order.

"_There's something beautiful about inactivity, Harry," she says after a moment. "It takes a lot to sit and watch."_

She thought she knew. She thought he only wanted to spend the day together, have a go at what they were never able to do while at Hogwarts and under the watchful eyes of everyone who ever meant anything in their lives.

Her stories—_everything_—suddenly make sense.

"_We're all fighting, Pansy."_

_She shakes her head. "We're not. Some of us are here in the moment, watching the blood pass us by."_

She is a ghost.

— — — — — —

It is after midnight and the streets of Lyon have settled into an empty silence that chills Harry's very soul. He has wandered the city for hours, retracing their steps and losing himself amongst the labyrinth of streets as he searches for what he has lost. He has been back to the amphitheater, the Saone, and the Metro, but Pansy is nowhere to be found. She's lost in a haze of lies, tears, and misconceptions that will haunt Harry in the months to come.

He has unknowingly gained an understanding of this city and the woman who makes it her corner to hide in, learned its streets and this woman in the moments they have stood together and let the world drift by them.

He sees the cats at the amphitheater and her cigarette butts at the Saone and the same ghost of a man on the C line of the Metro. But there is no Pansy, no snark and no perfume, and Harry finds himself wandering dismally as he wonders what he is to do.

How does one find a person who does not wish to be found? Both the Muggle and magical means to do so are painfully limited. Despite his Auror training and everything he's been through in this war, he cannot think of a way.

A part of his mind tells him that he doesn't need to find her, that she wishes to be lost and it's best to leave things as is. After all, he came to Lyon with a job to do, and a pang of guilt rushes through him at the realization that he hasn't met with the Order informant at all. He has spent all of his time on Pansy and her words and her moments and this day, and has lost sight of reality. Pansy makes her home some place on the blurred line that separates truth from the pretend world where black cats sit on Harry's lap and purr all afternoon as he talks nonsense and Hogwarts with a girl he hasn't seen in two long years. He has not thought of her in those two years, has not thought she mattered.

But Pansy is too big and beautiful when she is directly before you to _not_ think about her, to write her off as a Death Eater daughter and bride and all the other words Harry has heard so many label her when they spoke of her disappearance. She has words and eyes and a voice and says his name. She is not like Ginny or any of the other girls he has ever known, and he wishes he had Ron, or Hermione, to be here and keep him safe from Pansy Parkinson and all that she is. His day with her has left him raw and bleeding, and Harry slumps down against the side of a brick wall, closing his eyes and breathing as he tells himself to _just let go_.

He doesn't know how long he stands here. Ten minutes or an eternity; it doesn't matter. He hears a baby cry in the distance and moves, because he knows he must get back to his room and tell Remus how he has fucked up. Remus won't be happy, but Harry cannot bring himself to fear Remus and his disappointment. He is too numb to care.

He starts down an alleyway, unaware and uncaring of where it leads. The streetlight gives off very little light here, and Harry wonders if he will run into a dead end, or if the alley leads to another street. He wonders if that street will lead to his hotel, to Pansy's hotel.

His chest constricts, and he tells himself to stop thinking about Pansy because she's left and he's lost her forever because she isn't coming back.

He does not know why he wants her back. He only knows that it is so much easier to breathe when she and her cigarettes and sweet-smelling perfume are near. She eases his tired, awkward soul with her gentle teasing and her ability to simply stand _still_, gives peace to his heart with the feathery touch of her wings against his skin and the conviction that she _believes_. He wants her faith and conviction—wants her by his side. He wants to go back to that first moment in the café early this afternoon and tell her that he doesn't _care_ that she isn't who he's supposed to be looking for because he knows that she has so much more to give to him.

And he is selfish—so selfish—for wanting something for himself more than something for the Order—for the greater good. But in his world of blood and death—in England—Harry Potter has nothing to hold on to. There are no thoughts—no _body_—to keep him warm and fight away the villains in his dreams. He has fought all his life, only to have everything that has ever given him any sort of reprieve from the sorrow in his heart snatched away from him. Only Voldemort has not stolen Pansy away from him. Harry has pushed her away himself, hiding under the cloak of responsibility Voldemort gives him to demand things from her that she could not give, when she was willing to give so much more.

His heart aches, and right now, he's willing to give anything—his life, the war—to have only one more moment with her to make things right.

But Harry knows better than to believe that things are that easy to fix. He tells himself that he is stupid and selfish, and that he has a purpose in this world and this war and there is no room for selfish wants until he completes it.

He wants to retch.

There are footsteps behind him, quiet at first, though increasing in volume as the person following him increases his pace. A Muggle street urchin, he thinks, come to rob him for whatever he has. He looks at the darkness in his periphery, sighing. He pushes Pansy from his mind and keeps his pace even, his right hand tightly wrapped around his wand as he waits for the attack. It never comes. Instead, there is a voice, quiet and cracked:

"Potter."

Harry turns around then, and his eyes, already alight with suspicion, widen in shock. Before him stands Draco Malfoy, bloody and beaten. His hair is a rumpled, dirty mess and there's a gash spanning the entire right side of his face, with smaller scratches on the left.

"Potter," he says again.

He looks woozy, weary, as if he wants to collapse and never get up again.

"Malfoy," he says, awestruck.

"We have to hurry," he tells him tiredly, already turning back the way he came. "I know I'm late, but you're a bitch to find and I couldn't carry her all this way."

Harry follows him. He thinks that he should be more apprehensive, more distrustful of this being who has haunted him in some way, shape, or form for as long as he can remember. But Pansy's conviction of the young Malfoy's innate goodness was infectious, and before he knows it, he is following Malfoy down this alleyway and the next, realization slowly dawning on him that it is _Malfoy_ who Snape had always travelled so far to see. _Malfoy_ has been working all these years for the Order. Remus' instructions to wait at the café for as long as it took haunt him, and he knows that he has fucked up in that respect as well. He wonders if he is the reason for Malfoy's injuries, the lack of backup preventing him from properly protecting himself against the onslaught of Death Eater rage.

He cannot believe he feels bad about Malfoy's pain. He cannot believe that he is the informant.

When they stop, they are near Bellecour, where Harry's day and moments ended only a few hours before. He looks at the square, noting how different it looks without people and Pansy to liven its environs.

But there is no time to think about this or Pansy, because Harry's heart has just stopped and he thinks he will die, because Malfoy has just walked over to a bench and picked up Hermione Granger.

She is wild-haired and unconscious, malnourished and black and blue, but she is breathing and alive, and Harry's hands shake as Malfoy places her in his arms.

"I can't carry her anymore," he says quietly. Harry looks at him, noting the tired bags beneath his eyes and how utterly broken and defeated he looks. It's as if he's put everything he's had and more into this—into delivering Hermione Granger—and now there is nothing left. Now, he can die, or something.

And it makes no sense, because Malfoy is supposed to be all bad and a Death Eater, not working undercover for the Order of the Phoenix and saving the girl Harry had been so sure he'd betrayed to the Dark Lord.

He realizes then that it doesn't have to make sense. Some things just _are_—inexplicable and all that. Draco Malfoy does not need an explanation for his behavior, for Hermione Granger.

It's like St. Blandine and the lions, the bulls. Only Hermione has been saved before the Roman soldiers—the Death Eaters—could finish her off.

"I'll hold her," Harry replies, realizing how much it takes for Malfoy to place Hermione in his arms. "I'll protect her."

Malfoy nods slowly. He looks down into Hermione's face, so peaceful one might even think she is sleeping, not comatose. He moves a piece of hair from her cheek, a gesture so painfully tender and intimate that Harry looks away. And then, just like that, he is gone, the _crack_ of Apparition signaling his departure from the scene.

Harry is still for a moment, completely at a loss for what has just transpired and what he is to do now. A pigeon flies away from its roost atop Louie XIV. A car passes by the nearby street. Harry sighs, looking down at the sleeping girl he has not seen in so long, now laying in his arms.

And he hears her voice in his head again, telling him all the things he was too blind to see as she sat right next to him the entire daylong.

"_That's where God comes from, Harry. That's what I believe in._"

There is another _crack_, and just as Malfoy had before him, Harry disappears, too.

— — — — — —

"That is too much."

A late November breeze blows through the area, ruffling her skirt and her scarf and her hair—so much longer now than he remembers. She is tapping her foot impatiently, staring down the fish merchant with a stubborn expression that clearly says he's going to give her what she wants or she's going to give him hell. The merchant does not know this. He begins to argue in French. Harry still does not speak French, but he knows what '_non'_ and its many variations mean, and it's all he hears coming from the merchants mouth.

She responds, outraged, in the Queen's English, vilifying the merchant as a misogynistic poof with repressed homosexual urges and a thoroughly unlikeable demeanor. He seems not to understand what she says, for he merely shoos her away as if she were an annoying bug rather than expressing any sort of indignation over her disrespectful words. She humps and stomps away. Harry smiles.

He watches as she makes her way through the crowd, travelling down the narrow walkways of the market to another vendor. He moves away from his spot by a cart displaying overpriced exotic beads to get a better view. She's at another fish stand. This vendor is older, nicer, and Pansy speaks to the older woman with a kinder inflection to her voice. The woman responds kindly in turn, and Harry can see Pansy point to a couple of fish the woman has on display. The vendor nods and places the specified pieces into a clear plastic bag, then wraps them in another.

He wonders what she needs it for, if she's cooking. He has never imagines her to be type of woman who cooks, but he also knows for a fact that she has a penchant for picking up strange habits and quirks. So maybe she cooks; he wouldn't expect it, but it wouldn't surprise him either.

His encounter with this strange, sad woman this past winter has shown him quite forcefully that expectations mean nothing, and that he'll do better to have none when she's involved.

He inhales, deep and long, noting how good it feels to breathe in the crisp Lyonnaise fall air. It is filled with a multitude of scents—bread and cooking meat and cigarettes. The smoke reminds him of her, and he takes another deep breath, hoping to catch a hint of her perfume on the wind. He can't. He finds it unfair that he thought he could smell her six hundred miles away in Grimmauld Place but not here, when he is a mere ten feet away.

It is different being back in Lyon. The trees are brown and bare, the barren branches sprouting upward into the sky as if they were offering a gift to the gods, or extending their arms in silent prayer for the swift return of spring and their leaves.

He is not weighed down by the baggage the war and the despair it brought during this trip, and he finds that he stands taller as he travels down the walkways of the Marché de la_ Croix Rousse, the biggest market in Lyon. However, there is symmetry between this visit and the last in the sense that he is watching her again, unsure as he waits for the moment to approach her and searches for the words to say when he does. _

_It shouldn't be so hard. He knows her scent and her secrets and her blatant lies, and even though it was only one day, they'd shared a thousand and one moments in that short expanse of time. It should be far easier for him to say 'hello' now when only eight months have passed._

_But it is that thing with time again. Many things have happened in the past months, and though it only feels like yesterday since he was in this city with a girl who confused him so, the scars on his aged body tell him otherwise._

_It is funny that he thinks of himself in this way now, because he had never viewed himself as old until the words left her lips in the café when they first met. He counts it as one of the first things she said to him that was actually true._

Pansy leaves the female fish vendor's table with a smile, waving over her shoulder at the woman who'd given her a deal. He wonders at her smiles and her pleasantries, wondering where they were eight months before when the war was still going on and she was trying to teach him to be still and enjoy a moment. She walks back in the direction from whence she came, passing by the man she'd so beautifully slandered a few moments before. She shakes her fist at him in indignation before skipping away.

She doesn't go very far. She is taken with the gaudy beads on display at the cart where Harry had previously stood, picking up a miniscule pearl and holding it in front of her face for closer examination.

She is directly across from him now, so close he can see the rosy tint to her cheeks. He swallows. If she turns around, she will see him, and he wonders if he should move away and hide amongst the shopping crowd until he is better prepared for the encounter the will have.

He has run away from awards ceremonies and Rita Skeeter and Grimmauld Place to come back to Lyon. He put the trip off for days, weeks, but when he saw Rita Skeeter knocking on his door yesterday afternoon, he'd Apparated right out of his flat and to Diagon Alley to exchange some galleons for Muggle notes. He'd told Remus and Hermione that he was going iback/i, and the two knew enough of his experience with Pansy Parkinson to know he was going to Lyon.

He'd then gone to Heathrow and waited six hours for the first flight to Saint Exupery Airport in France. All the high-powered newspapers and magazines had bought off Ministry officials so they'd be informed straightaway if Harry Potter ever asked for a portkey. He was looking to avoid a confrontation, and Muggle transportation was far too low-key and _Muggle_ for any of the reporters after interviews and his personal pearls of wisdom to suspect that he'd ever take that route.

The plane ride brought a sense of parallelism to his life. It was how he'd travelled to Lyon when he'd visited in the late winter. And even though Remus had sent him there to meet with Draco Malfoy, it had been written in the stars that he and Pansy would come together that day. He has had months to think about this, and this is the only way he can explain why they met. Because, of all the cafes in the world—in Lyon—it had to be predetermined for Pansy to walk into the one where he sat, waiting for Pansy's former future betrothed to give him information and betray everything he'd ever known—just as Pansy had said she wouldn't do.

He knows now that Pansy knew about Draco, about what he was doing. It is why she was able to make such a defining statement about his actions to Harry as they walked around Place Bellecour, telling him so sincerely, _"He's not what you think."_ He'd been too blinded by prejudice and a childish schoolyard grudge to factor her words into what he already knew about Draco Malfoy from the conversations he'd overheard between Remus and Snape. He knows better now. He no longer allows himself to be blind.

Though, in that respect, he couldn't ignore Malfoy's double-agent status even if he'd wanted too. With Hermione rescued and moved into a room in Grimmauld Place, there had been no keeping Malfoy away. They are getting married now, in Prague. They will not return to England.

He has come to Lyon because he knows that Pansy will not come to England. If they are in these distant countries, he will never have a chance to tell her the words that have been tickling his tongue since he returned home. It is like a bad dream, a haunting melody of her voice and her tears that torments him every time he lays down to sleep. He has spent every night for the last eight months half-awake, murmuring a silent mantra that he would return to Lyon the moment he struck Voldemort down. He would not leave the war for her; he was too bound by his duty to vanquish the Dark Lord. However, they were on equal footing, because he knew she would not leave Lyon for him, either. She was too stubborn and paralyzed by her nerves and her cigarettes.

But the war is over and he must thank Rita Skeeter for knocking on his door, for if she hadn't he wouldn't have come to Lyon and be this close to this girl.

She is buying beads.

He has been very fortuitous in finding this woman, spying her walking along Quai Saint-Vincent after leaving the dingy hostel where he'd spent the night. Her hotel is on this street, and he has followed her ever since, his heart lurching to painful halts whenever she's looked in his direction and he has falsely feared that he has been caught.

He has not. He has followed her for an hour, watching her traverse the city she has made her refuge in the storm and carry on with her daily life. Watching her, he has realized that she has spent the past two years—almost _three_—like the rest of the people in France, untouched by the war in the UK. But he knows Pansy is affected by the war and the death that it has brought. He knows that she's realized someone is following her as well, as she has taken to looking around her far more frequently as the time has passed. He will have to face her soon.

She pays the man at the bead cart and is about to move away when something at the other end of the car catches her eye, causing her to turn back to the display. He can see her profile at this angle, and he thinks that she looks older, too. Her face has aged beyond her years, little lines of stress and sorrow marring the corners of her eyes and her mouth. It is neither flattering nor unflattering. Harry is used to the look. Britain has an entire generation of people who have aged prematurely. He thinks it is better than being dead.

She wears a simple skirt and top, and the dark tips of her long hair brush against the wool of her scarlet cardigan. She has the same bag, big and black with heavy gold hardware, and it is when he notices this that he sees the head poking out from the open zipper.

There is a cat in her bag. It is black.

He pauses at this, puzzling what the presence of the feline means in Pansy's life and lies. It is from the amphitheater, a domesticated member of the sentinel tribe that watches over the place where St. Blandine's was murdered. It looks at Pansy expectantly, and she turns and talks to it as if it were a human being, French words that Harry does not comprehend directed at an animal he is quite sure understands.

"One moment, one moment, mon petit chaton," she is saying, a mix of French and English now. "Just you wait."

She picks up another bead and discusses it with the seller. She frowns.

"That is too much," she says again.

"Magnifique!" the seller is saying. "C'est magnifique!"

"What do you think?" she says, looking over her shoulder—at the cat, perhaps. There is no response from her feline companion, and her frown deepens. "Harry, I'm talking to you."

She glances at him, briefly, and his heart does not beat for one, two moments.

"What do you think?"

His mouth is dry, and he has to swallow a few times before he is able to speak. "I think," he says slowly, taking a few steps closer, "that it's too much."

She clucks her tongue, giving him an exasperated look. "Are you looking?" She turns to him completely and holds the bead before his eyes. "Are you _really_ looking?"

He has not seen the bead and he never will. His eyes remain focused on hers. He wonders if they were always so blue and intense. He wonders why he does not remember looking at her being like this.

Harry raises his hand, placing it over her outstretched palm without breaking her gaze. He encases the bead and her dainty hand with his own and says, "I don't need to look."

She laughs then, a fluid melody that makes him exhale when he hears it. "Oh, Harry Potter, the games you play!" She continues to laugh at her joke; however, Harry is silent and unmoved, for once needing her to understand what he means. She sighs at his stony demeanor. "Fine," she tells him, "I won't buy it."

She makes to turn around, pulling the bead away to put it back on the display, however Harry's hand is a vice over hers, and he will not let her go. "Buy it," he says.

She looks at him, perplexed. "I don't want it."

"I don't _care_."

And then, in the boldest move of his life, he pulls her to him, sandwiching their joined hands between their bodies as he stares down into her face. She is startled and confused, and her breath leaves her lips in rapid little gasps. He has imagined this moment a thousand and one times in his head, though he has never thought that it would be so painful to say the words that have been hammering against his chest in rhythm with his heart for eight long months.

"I'm sorry."

They lose another thousand and one moments in the time it takes for her to respond. He wonders if he should say more however there _isn't_ anymore. Anything else that he says will be useless words to fill the silence where she has no wisdom or lies to give to him. She is speechless and he is done. He doesn't know what to do.

He says again, "Pansy, I'm _sorry_."

It is then that the tears come, salty liquid filling her eyes and making them look like glassy, crystalline stones.

"You idiot." Her words are weak and meaningless—placeholders for her lack of anything _real_.

"I know," he replies. "I don't know what else to—"

Her kiss is swift and unexpected, like a curse fired at your back in the heat of war. It is warm like fire and wet like tears, and he can taste coffee and cigarettes, croissants and sweetness on her lips. He wraps his other arm around her waist, pulling her fully to him as he snogs her senseless, giving her back the emotion behind all the sleepless nights she has caused him since she ran away from him in Place Bellecour. Her hand finds its place at his neck, her nails digging into his skin as she presents him with unspoken words and emotions Harry doesn't understand but is willing to spend all the moments in the world learning. He will speak French and smoke cigarettes and kill another Dark Lord for this woman. He will stand in moments for all eternity for her. He will live and breathe and die a million times—as long as he can be by her side. He will never stop kissing her.

She stops kissing him. She is gasping, breathless. He kisses her nose and her eyes and her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

She is smiling and laughing and giggling like a girl. He has never seen her show this many teeth or turn this shade of pink.

"I looked for you," he tells her.

Her hands are at the nape of his neck, tangled in his hair. "I figured."

"But then Malfoy found me and—"

"It's okay."

He looks at her, vulnerable and raw. "Don't leave," he says desperately.

"Oh, Harry, I have to. But you're welcome to come, of course." She smiles. "I'm merely going to make a delivery." She holds up the bag of fish she purchased from the vendor a few tables over.

Harry's nose wrinkles at the smell. "Fish?" he asks.

"It's what kitty likes. Don't you kitty?" They both look down at the cat, whose nose is in the air as it tries to escape from Pansy bag. "We've got to go feed the kitties," she says.

For once, he knows what she means. "To the amphitheater, then?"

She grins. "I'm interfering, Harry Potter. Aren't you proud?"

He looks at her seriously. "I'm very proud."

He is a buzzing fly, and she shrugs off the emotion in his gaze as easy as swatting a bug away. This is how she is. "We all must fight, yeah?"

He shakes his head. "No, we don't. It's a choice," he tells her. "Everything's a matter of choice."

"Well," she says, kissing his chin, his cheeks, "I choose you." She kisses his lips, distracting him enough to pull away from his hold. She places the bead back on the display and looks at him expectantly. "St. Blandine won't wait all day, Harry. Let's go."

— — — — — —

i-fin/i


End file.
